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70 years ago, this Jewish choreographer predicted our epidemic of loneliness and isolation
When the dance begins, they are all onstage together. But they are each very much alone. In the opening vignette of Anna Sokolow’s “Rooms,” there are eight chairs scattered across the stage and eight performers who inhabit them — like city apartments squished so close together yet keeping their occupants apart.
No one makes eye contact. They stare straight ahead. They stand and sit back down. They flop to the side and fold themselves over their thighs. They stretch out horizontally, one leg extending on a diagonal before falling to the floor with a thud. One dancer sets her chin in her palms, her gaze fixed on a corner, as though willing herself to see through a brick wall.
These are people trapped in their own tiny worlds, radiating loneliness, isolation, restlessness, fear, fantasy, desire, distress, panic.
Watching them at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City last month — the day after the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran, 13 months into a second Trump administration that has targeted immigrants and transgender people, among others, and in the midst of what former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s 2023 report deemed “our epidemic of loneliness and isolation” — one could easily imagine “Rooms” was created in 2026. Or during the global pandemic and lockdowns of recent history.
But Sokolow was long gone by the time COVID forced us into our own rooms, physically and socially distant from almost everyone else. She didn’t live to see the tiny screens and tempting apps that would degrade our attention spans and become intermediaries in so many of our conversations. She missed the rise of artificial intelligence chatbots that offer alternatives to human interaction.
Sokolow, who died in 2000 at the age of 90, created “Rooms” seven decades ago, in the wake of a world war and the Holocaust, at a time when polio was rampant, and in the midst of a nuclear arms race and the Red and Lavender Scares of the 1950s.
Yet “Rooms” still feels believable, relatable and unsettling today.
‘An incredible humanity’
The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants who arrived in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, Sokolow grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City — at the time, the densely packed “capital of Jewish America.” Sokolow’s mother, Sarah, a factory worker, was active in the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and was, as Sokolow later described her, “a staunch Socialist.”
Sarah was “angered by the conditions she observed all around her,” writes Sokolow’s biographer, Larry Warren, and kept up with “socialist causes and political activities” by reading Yiddish-language newspapers such as the Forward.
Like her mother, Sokolow looked closely at what was happening around her. She took it all in and put it onstage, Samantha Géracht, artistic director of the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, told me.
“She walked everywhere,” said Géracht, who was part of the rotation of dancers who accompanied Sokolow to rehearsals when she kept walking everywhere, slowly, into her 80s. “Every shopkeeper, every unhoused person in a doorway, everybody spoke to her, and she spoke to everyone,” Géracht said. “She looked and saw everyone and everything, and she didn’t dismiss any of them.”
Though secular, Sokolow was driven by Jewish values, Hannah Kosstrin, a dance historian at Ohio State University and director of its Melton Center for Jewish Studies, told me over Zoom. “She was most interested in making dances about the underdog,” said Kosstrin, who is also the author of Honest Bodies: Revolutionary Modernism in the Dances of Anna Sokolow. “About people who were not served by society, people who were unwanted, untouchable, and people who had been through the worst of humanitarian experiences.”
In the 1930s, she made, among other dances, the anti-fascist “Anti-War Trilogy”; “Slaughter of the Innocents,” inspired by the Spanish Civil War; and “The Exile” — which portrayed Jewish life in Europe and the arrival of Nazism. She danced “Kaddish” in 1945 as an “elegy” mourning the Jews who perished in the Holocaust, according to Kosstrin, and later choreographed “Dreams,” which Géracht describes as Sokolow’s “Holocaust nightmares onstage.”
Her work “has an incredible humanity to it,” Kosstrin said.
Kosstrin first encountered Sokolow through a film of “Rooms” as a freshman dance major. “I just remember being absolutely taken with it. It was so intense and so gritty and so real,” she said. “I felt a very particular kind of distress in a way that I had never felt watching dance before,” she added. “That was so incredibly powerful.”
“Rooms,” which had its New York premiere in 1955, was inspired by the Lower East Side tenement houses of Sokolow’s youth. It’s spare — performed with no backdrop, only lighting, chairs, and simple costumes to an original jazz score by the American composer Kenyon Hopkins. Part of its enduring potency is that it could represent any time and any place.
‘I believe you’
Introducing the performance at the museum, Géracht set the scene with one simple instruction. Picture, she told the audience, a building with its facade removed so you could peer into all the apartments and look — really look, as Sokolow would — at the people inside.
In one vignette titled “Going,” a man careens about like he’s just flipped the release valve on his pent-up energy, exploding in big jumps, sliding onto the floor, and snapping his fingers. In “Desire,” six dancers slide their feet back and forth as though caressing the ground. They reach an arm or a leg, as if yearning to entangle their limbs with a lover’s.
In “Escape,” I saw a woman dance with someone who isn’t there. She stands, arms thrown up high, spinning around herself. She flits around the stage. She pulls two chairs to face each other, sits down, and catches the air in an empty embrace. Later, she swipes at each of the chairs in turn and they clatter to the ground.
“She’s very different from me,” dancer Ilana Ruth Cohen told me of the character she embodies in “Escape.” “I do not escape easily, and I don’t tend to look for an escape.” What’s helped, she said, is “remembering the moments I do have where I am drifting or dreaming or imagining being somewhere else, and then trying to use Anna’s movement to expand my experience of those moments.”
There are no prescribed narratives in “Rooms,” just snippets of images and an urgency of emotion that might be read differently by every spectator. That’s OK, Cohen said. “I’m not trying to make sure that the audience knows what my experience is,” she explained. “I’m using my experience to make the movement true, and then the audience has an experience because they’re with me as that’s happening.”
Kosstrin focused her research around the idea of “honest bodies” in part as a way “to highlight Sokolow’s emphasis on believable, raw vulnerability in performance.” As such, Lauren Naslund, an associate artistic director of the ensemble, told me at a recent rehearsal, high praise from Sokolow would be: “You’re doing it in your own way, and I believe you.”
In the vignette “The End?” I saw a woman having a breakdown. Her left hand makes talking motions — thumb to fingers, open and shut — arguing with her right. Her fingers rise toward her ears and wiggle frantically as she extends her arms outward. She steps onto her chair, head tilted back, and flaps her arms like wings in slow motion. Her fragile psyche manifests in movement. She is, perhaps, hearing voices in her head. Feeling her thoughts slip out of her control. Wondering whether she wants to remain in this world.
“Rooms” concludes as it starts, with eight chairs and eight dancers — so close to each other, but still very much alone.
There’s a clip Géracht shows in her lectures with a voiceover from Sokolow speaking on top of footage from “Rooms.” “I don’t end it, because I don’t feel there’s any ending,” Sokolow says. “That’s the Jew in me. Ask the world a question and there’s no answer. All I do is present what I feel and you, you answer.”
‘A kind of beacon’
The Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble was about four weeks away from presenting “Rooms” when the COVID-19 pandemic sent everyone home in March 2020 and cleared live performance calendars indefinitely. Suddenly, Géracht said, “we didn’t have to struggle with the idea of how to understand isolation.”
Relegated to their homes like everyone else, the dancers continued working on “Rooms” over Zoom. “You can’t go outside. There’s no classes. There’s no rehearsals. There’s nothing,” remembered dancer Margherita Tisato, who performs the challenging solo “The End?”. “Having a task and having time to dedicate to do this was definitely lifesaving on an emotional level, probably for a lot of us.”
At the same time, she said, “it was asking me to dig more and more deeply into the thing that was, at the moment, really, really hard.” The project provided a creative outlet, but also forced her to grapple with her own feelings of aloneness and isolation.
Eventually, the dancers worked with their rehearsal directors to select the right angles, propped up their computers and phones, and hit record to capture themselves navigating bookcases, coffee tables, cats, and narrow hallways. Naslund edited the footage together to create “Rooms2020,” a COVID-era interpretation of the piece they couldn’t share in person. They later partnered with Madison-based Kanopy Dance to livestream a joint production from Wisconsin and New York, offered virtual workshops to college dance students, and put on a “Rooms” symposium.
“There could not have been a better dance to stage during the pandemic than ‘Rooms’ on video in people’s apartments,” Kosstrin said. Looking back, she said, it offers a social, emotional, and aesthetic window into that moment, with so many stuck in their own bubbles and thrust into each others’ living rooms through tiny squares on their screens.
Géracht said she immersed herself so deeply in “Rooms” that she needed a break before revisiting it again. Although the lockdown experiences are still embedded in the dancers’ bodies and memories, they couldn’t let the work get stuck or stale.
“You don’t want to replicate what you did six years ago,” said Géracht.
“It’s like going on a hike up a really high mountain. Maybe you’ve climbed that mountain,” she said. “You kind of know the way, but you still have to do the whole hike from the bottom to the top.” Every time you do it, “you’re different, the movement’s different, the world is different. And I don’t want the last version you did. I want you now. Which is why we can do the work for so long.”
Géracht is intent on breathing new life into Sokolow’s dances in 2026 and beyond. She wants audiences to experience the “wealth and range” of Sokolow’s work and “understand her genius,” Géracht said, as an artist who “shows us our entire spectrum of human emotion.”
In “Rooms,” Sokolow reminds us, in 2026 as in 2020 as in 1955, what it’s like to crave connection or touch. To conjure a loved one in our mind, only to be startled by the reality of their absence. To get lost in a daydream. To fear what’s outside our control. To feel utterly alone. To be consumed by panic. To fall apart.
Complete, live productions of “Rooms” are somewhat rare. But the ensemble has just confirmed it will perform the piece again at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in September. Having seen — and felt — it for myself recently, I hope there will be many more shows to come.
Distressing as it may be to see this “cry of alienation and isolation” reflected back at us right now, Kosstrin said, it could also help us find our way. “We are seeing so many things happen around us that [are] making us question our humanity and other people’s humanity,” she said. Artists like Sokolow, she believes, “can give us a kind of beacon as we try to muddle through these times.”
The post 70 years ago, this Jewish choreographer predicted our epidemic of loneliness and isolation appeared first on The Forward.
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US Sen. Rand Paul’s Son Apologizes After Drunken Antisemitic Insults Against Catholic Congressman
US Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is trailed by reporters as he arrives for the weekly Senate Republican caucus luncheon at the US Capitol in Washington, US, May 22, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
William Paul, the adult son of frequent Israel critic US Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), has apologized following reports that he made antisemitic and homophobic statements while defending Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) at a Capitol Hill restaurant on Tuesday evening.
NOTUS reporter Reese Gorman witnessed the encounter at Tune Inn and wrote that the younger Paul, 33, sat a few seats down from Lawler at the bar when he introduced himself and told the congressman that if Massie lost in his upcoming primary, “your people” would be responsible.
Lawler, an Irish Catholic, asked, “My people?”
This prompted Paul to say, “Yeah, you Jews.”
Lawler then clarified his religious background, saying, “Do you think I’m Jewish? I’m not.”
Paul apologized for his error, replying, “Oh wow, I’m so sorry for calling you a Jew.”
Lawler later told reporters the comment was “just a remarkable statement in and of itself,” adding that “at one point, you know, said that he hates Jews and hates gays and doesn’t care if they die. And I think that’s f**king disgusting.”
Lawler told the New York Post that he responded to Paul mistakenly identifying him as a Jew with, “And even if I was, what’s the problem?”
“Then he got into the Middle East,” the lawmaker recounted. “And he was talking about, like, us trying to steal Iran’s land for the Jews and steal the West Bank, and I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
Paul then reportedly proclaimed Jews were “un-American” and more loyal to Israel. Lawler argued back against Paul’s dual-loyalty accusations and accused him of being antisemitic.
“Paul Singer serves Israeli interests, not American interests,” Paul also said during the encounter, referring to the billionaire Republican donor and prominent Jewish supporter of pro-Israel causes.
Singer has supported Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL challenging Massie in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District.
A new campaign ad that aired in Kentucky this week and was sponsored by Hold the Line PAC, a group backing Massie, characterized Singer as a “pro-trans billionaire” and featured a rainbow-colored Star of David behind his image while attacking Gallrein’s allies.
Critics condemned the imagery as antisemitic, arguing it invoked longstanding tropes about Jewish financial influence and used Jewish symbolism in a way designed to inflame cultural resentment.
Massie himself has been a fierce critic of Israel, condemning its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon and arguing that the Jewish state has targeted civilian infrastructure and should not receive assistance from the US.
US President Donald Trump has endorsed Gallrein and actively campaigned against Massie, who like Paul’s father is a libertarian-leaning Republican known for frequently breaking with party leadership and advocating an isolationist foreign policy.
During his outburst this week, the younger Paul also urged Lawler to watch far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson more and claimed that Massie and his father were the only legislators who care about America. In multiple postings on X, Paul promoted “Save the Republic Money Bomb” donations for Massie.
In December 2023, Massie sparked condemnation for posting a meme suggesting that Congress was more loyal to Zionism than “American patriotism.”
In recent years, meanwhile, Carlson has emerged as the leading anti-Israel commentator on the American political right, routinely advancing conspiracy theories condemning the Jewish state while heaping praise on Qatar, the longtime supporter of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Tuesday’s exchange concluded with Paul performing an obscene gesture.
Lawler responded by asking, “Did you just give me the middle finger?”
Paul replied, “I’m sorry, yeah, I did. I’m just really drunk. I’m going to leave.” He reportedly stumbled on his way leaving the bar.
Paul attempted to apologize on X on Wednesday from his @TastyBrew1776 account, writing, “Last night, I had too much to drink and said some things that don’t represent who I really am. I’m sorry and today I am seeking help for my drinking problem.” He has struggled with his alcohol use before, pleading guilty to a drunk driving charge in 2015.
Rabbi Uri Pilichowski responded to the apology.
“You don’t just have a drinking problem, you have a Jew-hating problem,” he posted. “The Jewish sages taught, ‘Wine goes in, and secrets come out.’ You need some Jewish friends so you can correct your image of Jews.”
Conservative columnist Bethany Mandel, an advocate for Jewish outreach to antisemites, responded with an invitation to Paul, asking him, “Care to come for Shabbat dinner sometime?”
Addressing the admission of excessive drinking, Lawler told reporters, “That’s not an excuse for that type of hatred and vitriol. It’s my fourth year in Washington; that was arguably the most shocking thing I’ve witnessed.”
Lawler explained how he saw the encounter in the context of today’s rising antisemitism.
“But I mean, look, I think it speaks to a larger issue, obviously, in society and what we’re seeing among young people and what we see online,” he said. “And this is the level of hatred and vitriol, frankly, that some of my Jewish colleagues experience, but many of my constituents experience.”
Paul’s father chose not to comment on his son’s antisemitic outburst, saying to reporters on Wednesday only, “I don’t have anything for you.”
He and Massie have both faced substantial criticism for their positions on Israel.
On numerous occasions, Massie voted as the lone Republican in the House opposing bills supporting Israel and denouncing antisemitism. In October 2023, he voted against House Resolution 771, which stated that Congress “stands with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists” and “reaffirms the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security.” In September 2021 he was likewise the sole Republican to oppose the Iron Dome Supplemental Appropriations Act.
In May 2022, Massie earned the distinction of being the only member of Congress to oppose a resolution honoring Jewish Americans’ heritage and denouncing a rise in antisemitic violence. He also distinguished himself further on Nov. 28, 2023, as the only legislator to vote against a resolution reaffirming Israel’s right to exist.
In January 2024, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley condemned Massie as “the most anti-Israel Republican in Congress” and challenged her primary rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to denounce his support.
Paul has also faced opposition for his actions against the Jewish state. In November 2018, he blocked two bills to continue military funding of Israel. Then-Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said then that “at a time when Israel faces unprecedented threats, blocking a bipartisan bill that empowers the US to stand with Israel is inexplicable.” Paul claimed that he supported Israel and that his move was intended toward encouraging the Jewish state to support its own defense.
Former Texas Rep. Ron Paul — the father of Rand and grandfather of William — has faced accusations of bigotry for decades, originating in his decision to publish a series of 1980s newsletters bearing his name which promoted racism, antisemitism, homophobia, and conspiracy theories, including one since identified by analysts as disinformation deployed by the KGB accusing the United States of creating the AIDS virus.
According to former Cato President Ed Crane, Ron Paul once told him that “his best source of congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for the Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, antisemitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto.”
Rand has previously spoken fondly about the influence of one of his father’s antisemitic mentors, Murray Rothbard, the founder of the anarcho-capitalist and paleo-libertarian traditions who frequented the Paul family’s dinner table. During his career, Rothbard promoted Holocaust deniers, used antisemitic slurs in private correspondence, called for abolishing the Constitution to return to the Articles of Confederation, and urged Republicans to support former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
“I have one of the largest Jewish populations anywhere in the country in my congressional district, and I’m not going to stop standing up for my constituents,” Lawler told reporters. “I’m going to stand up for the Judeo-Christian values that are at the core of our nation, our Constitution, and our rule of law, as I reminded Mr. Paul.”
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Israel to Extend F-35 Flight Range in Push to Build Up Military Force
A US Marines F-35C Lightning II is staged for flight operations on the flight deck of the US Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in support of the Operation Epic Fury attack on Iran from an undisclosed location March 3, 2026. Photo: US Navy/Handout via REUTERS
Amid a multi-front conflict and a broader drive to bolster its military capabilities, Israel has signed a new contract with Elbit Systems subsidiary Cyclone to develop an extended-range capability for the F-35 Lightning II, marking its latest effort to extend the aircraft’s operational reach and endurance.
On Thursday, Israel’s Defense Ministry announced it signed a $34 million contract with Cyclone to develop and integrate external fuel tank systems for the Lockheed Martin-manufactured platform, aimed at enhancing its operational reach and in-flight persistence during extended missions.
Based on an existing Cyclone design used on F-16 aircraft, the system is expected to reduce reliance on aerial refueling and enhance the Israeli Air Force’s flexibility in long-range operations.
The aircraft integrates stealth capabilities, advanced data fusion, and internal weapons carriage, alongside Israeli-developed electronic warfare, communications, and computing systems that are incorporated into the US-built platform architecture.
Israeli officials said the agreement is part of a broader effort to strengthen domestic defense-production capabilities, improve readiness for a prolonged period of security challenges, and preserve Israel’s regional air and strategic superiority, amid an expanding multi-front conflict against Iran and its regional terrorist proxies.
After more than three years of war, Israel is now expected to increase defense spending over the next decade by roughly $95 billion, on top of an annual defense budget that has already grown from under $27 billion to nearly $40 billion.
Earlier this month, Israel also announced a major expansion of its combat air fleet, effectively doubling its planned procurement of F-35 Lightning II aircraft from 50 to 100, while increasing its next-generation F-15 Eagle fleet from 25 to 50, as part of one of its largest long-term force modernization programs in decades.
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I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
Because there have been many public misstatements and mischaracterizations, I believe it is incumbent on me as chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary to clarify the facts about our invitation to Israeli President Isaac Herzog to serve as our commencement speaker this year.
Herzog’s leadership and public service reflect the core principles and values that underlie JTS’s enduring commitment to the state of Israel, and to a vision of Zionism that is central to our institution. His life and work, including his advocacy for strengthening Israel’s democracy and his defense of a two-state solution, align with JTS’s mission.
Our seminary’s leadership felt that awarding him an honorary degree, and having our students hear him speak directly to them, would be both a privilege and fully consistent with our love for Israel and the people of Israel. (Herzog can no longer attend the commencement in person, but will be delivering his commencement address virtually, and will receive his honorary degree in person at some date in the future.)
I am proud that JTS serves as a forum for respectful disagreement, which our choice of Herzog as speaker prompted. The Jewish world encompasses a wide range of perspectives, particularly regarding the political situation in Israel. That diversity of thought exists both within our classrooms and beyond. I welcome the voices of those who may disagree.
What is regrettable is the extent to which respectful disagreement has been drowned out by a public media spectacle.
After our initial announcement of Herzog as commencement speaker, six seniors in JTS’s undergraduate dual-degree programs with Barnard College and Columbia University wrote a letter expressing their opposition to our decision.
Those students’ concerns focused on the policies of the Israeli government in its recent wars, and in no way challenged the legitimacy of the state of Israel. They also asked some additional students and alumni of other JTS schools to sign on in support of their objections. This list of supporters included four rabbinical students, three of whom are first-year students.
As too often happens in such circumstances, the letter was shared more widely, without the students’ prior knowledge or consent. This was dismaying to several of the students, who had intended to hand deliver it to me to spark conversation. What should have been a private exchange between students and their administrators escalated in alarming ways.
The authors were publicly criticized, misidentified as rabbinical students, and labeled “anti-Zionist,” including by some parties who purport to care deeply about JTS. Calls were made for their expulsion, and unfounded accusations were directed at their characters.
Few individuals from the community called me for clarification about what was actually transpiring before rushing to judgment publicly. Absent was the principle of “dan l’chav zechut” — that we should assume the best unless proven otherwise. I was deeply saddened by the outcry.
Here’s what actually happened: After I was made aware of this letter, I invited the undergraduates who authored it to meet with me for an extended and honest conversation. What they said in that conversation made it clear that anyone who labels them as anti-Zionist is misguided.
Rather, they are thoughtful individuals whose consciences are deeply troubled by many of the actions of Israel’s current government. Our conversation gave us an opportunity to discuss the role of dissent within a committed community, the importance of understanding the totality of a public figure’s career rather than focusing on isolated statements, and the distinct responsibilities of the offices of prime minister and president of Israel.
We at JTS take our responsibility as educators seriously. First and foremost, we are here to teach our students to engage with difficult issues thoughtfully, navigate disagreement and move forward in constructive and meaningful ways.
But just as important is our obligation to support and defend them when they are portrayed unfairly in public forums by those who do not know them as we do.
We take equal pride in the students who wrote the letter raising concerns about Herzog’s role in commencement, and those who wrote a letter to me expressing strong support for it — a response I heard echoed by many.
As Noam Pianko wrote in the Forward, this kind of thoughtful and respectful exchange about Israel and Zionism at JTS is not new; it is part of a longstanding tradition and precisely the kind of engagement we should continue to foster. One of our students who favored Herzog’s appearance reflected that in our courses, “the focus is not on advancing a single vision of Zionism but on confronting the deep and often irreconcilable disagreements within it. We read competing Zionist thinkers … Each author offers fundamentally different answers to what a Jewish state should be and what it should prioritize.”
We hope the Jewish community joins us in taking pride in the thoughtful young people who are working to navigate a complex Jewish world. By embracing, supporting and educating them, we can help ensure they remain deeply connected to the Jewish community, continue to be nourished by it, and contribute to its future in meaningful ways.
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